Jamahl Strachan went to Washington in the summer of 2008 to work as an intern on Capitol Hill, where as a 20-year-old rising senior at UMES he landed a coveted assignment in the office of the junior senator from Illinois.
That fall, the latter became the first Black man elected President of the United States.
Strachan, now 33, is the Bahamas’ youngest Member of Parliament.
Strachan came to Princess Anne in the fall of 2005 with adolescent dreams of representing his country in the Olympics as a track-and-field athlete as well as harboring thoughts of a legal career.
His four months in the nation’s capital changed the trajectory of Strachan’s life.
“When I returned (to campus) from Washington,” he said. “I had lost all interest in track.”
Strachan finished his studies at UMES in 2011 with two degrees — a bachelor’s and master’s in criminal justice — and with a new-found yearning to return to the Bahamas to make a difference in people’s lives.
“I felt I had to go home,” he said. “You can’t spend all your time at university.”
Strachan had no idea in early 2008 who Barack Obama was. As a student-athlete, he concentrated on his studies to stay eligible to compete – he graduated summa cum laude – and trained as a high jumper and record-setting pole vaulter.
Strachan’s visits home were few and far between. He typically remained stateside to save on the cost of travel and to focus on staying in shape academically and athletically.
After seeing a poster on a Hazel Hall bulletin board as an undergraduate, and encouraged by a UMES professor, Strachan secured a Comcast Diversity Congressional Scholarship, a program that exposed undergraduates at historically Black institutions to the work of Congress.
He and four other UMES students headed off to Washington shortly after the spring semester ended.
Strachan was not immediately assigned to a Congressional office. A week later, however, he got a message to report to Obama’s U.S Senate office.
By early June it was clear Obama would be the 2008 Democratic Party nominee for president; Strachan’s ambitious fellow interns unsuccessfully lobbied him to trade assignments.
He showed up for work and recalled an office staffer greeted him with a typical ice-breaker question: “Which part of Illinois are you from?”
That exchange is among Strachan’s favorite memories from the summer of 2008.
Strachan embraced the assignment as a challenge just the way he would “as a competitive student-athlete.”
“I had absolutely no knowledge of Illinois,” he said. “So, I devoted myself to learning everything I could about the state and the people Sen. Obama represented.”
Looking back, he described it as a warp-speed course on the intricacies of the federal government, and the geographically diverse mid-western state.
Strachan interacted with Obama three times that summer, including a photo session on the Capitol steps the senator made time to attend to show appreciation for his work.
“It shows you how your life can change in an instant,” Strachan said.
Finding work back home right away was difficult. He eventually landed a position with IBM, then was recruited to work for the Bahamian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
While thankful to being able to serve his country, the life of a desk-bound bureaucrat did not excite him.
In 2015, Strachan headed to Beijing, where he said he earned a master’s degree in international law from the China Foreign Affairs University. He learned to speak and read Mandarin.
Upon his return to the Bahamas a year later to his government job, he hoped to get an overseas posting that never came.
At 28, Strachan borrowed a page from community-organizer Obama’s early career playbook and started a non-profit, “The Future of our Neighborhoods.”
He drew on his experience as a socially active undergraduate, where he pledged and eventually was elected by peers to be chapter president of Omega Psi Phi, a fraternity that places a high value on community service.
Strachan enlisted a network of friends and acquaintances to join him in mounting a grassroots campaigns to clean up down-on-their-luck neighborhoods and address “food security” woes facing Nassau Village neighbors. His image as an emerging philanthropist got noticed.
Challenged by his fiancée, Strachan submitted a portfolio to the Progressive Liberal Party hoping its leadership might support him as a candidate for the Bahamian parliament.
“I resigned from my job not knowing whether an election would even be called,” he said of the former British colony’s election system, adding “I have no issues not knowing what I’m going to do next.”
Strachan has not had contact with former President Obama since 2008, but noted “I wrote to him while I was vying to be a Member of Parliament.”
He swept into office in September 2021, garnering, he said, 75 percent of the vote to represent the Nassau Village region.
The Progressive Liberal Party leadership made him its liaison to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the parliamentary secretary, which makes him the agency’s number two official and an “ambassador at-large.”
Strachan credits taking a chance on coming to America for a college education as “a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
“The reality is that – that was my springboard,” he said.
“I’d like to think my story – so far – shows the sky is the limit,” he said.
The headline is inspired by the Commonwealth of the Bahamas’ national motto.
